Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Headlines - Tuesday November 9

Some people give lame reasons to be pro-life, but George W. Bush really has a pretty good excuse. While on his current "Say Anything To Get People To Buy My Book Nobody Would Read Otherwise" tour, Bush revealed to Matt Lauer the reason he dislikes abortion: His mother had a miscarriage when he was a teenager and liked to parade around her dead offspring in a jar. Holy hell, this family.

"She said to her teenage kid, 'Here's the fetus,' " the shockingly candid Bush told NBC's Matt Lauer, gesturing as if he were holding the jar during the TV chat, a DVD of which The Post exclusively obtained.

"There's no question that affected me, a philosophy that we should respect life," said the former president [...]

But "the purpose of the story wasn't to try show the evolution of a pro-life point of view," Bush insisted to Lauer.

It was to scare children on Halloween?

"It was really to show how my mom and I developed a relationship."

Oh Lord, did the two of them have sex? This almost excuses the whole torture thing. [NYP]

SURVEY: The Family Research Council Wants To Know What You Think Of Them

Well, what are you waiting for? Go tell them. I've given you a few keywords that may help you craft your response.

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Rand Paul wants to "fight" for earmarks. You know, because he's a small government libertarian who's against wealth redistribution.

In a bigger shift from his campaign pledge to end earmarks, he tells me that they are a bad "symbol" of easy spending but that he will fight for Kentucky's share of earmarks and federal pork, as long as it's doled out transparently at the committee level and not parachuted in in the dead of night. "I will advocate for Kentucky's interests," he says.

So you're not a crazy libertarian? "Not that crazy," he cracks.

How about "crazy" and "not a libertarian"?

I'm looking forward to watching the tea party crap its cage over shit like this.

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After bellowing 'where are the jobs?' for weeks now, Boner can't say where he'll create jobs or how many

There are hints of the direction our country will be taking in the near future.

Medicaid is one of our rare social safety net programs — it provides basic health care support for low income, disabled, and elderly people, and is supported by both federal and state level funds. Emboldened by the recent election results, which apparently tell them it's now open season on the poor, Texas Republicans are talking about ending Medicaid. By refusing to carry their 40% of the Medicaid bill in the state of Texas, they'd lose the 60% coming from the federal government — so poor Texans would lose 100% of their Medicaid assistance. What a deal!

This is pretty much the fat lady singing folks. Democrats are preparing to abandon the fight. We will see them, once again, as they did on LGBT initiatives in healthcare reform, as they did when they passed DADT and DOMA, and Bill Clinton signed them, they take a big crap on us, then come to us and say, "Well, what else could we do? We had to."

Don't you believe it. You tell them, "You could have fought for it."

That's what I want to hear. I don't seem to be getting it from the Democratic party.

Well not yet, but using the growing economic disparity between the top 1% and the rest of the country as a leading indicator, Nicholas Kristoff would tell you that banana republic status is right around the corner.

In my reporting, I regularly travel to banana republics notorious for their inequality. In some of these plutocracies, the richest 1 percent of the population gobbles up 20 percent of the national pie.

But guess what? You no longer need to travel to distant and dangerous countries to observe such rapacious inequality. We now have it right here at home — and in the aftermath of Tuesday's election, it may get worse.

The richest 1 percent of Americans now take home almost 24 percent of income, up from almost 9 percent in 1976. As Timothy Noah of Slate noted in an excellent series on inequality, the United States now arguably has a more unequal distribution of wealth than traditional banana republics like Nicaragua, Venezuela and Guyana.

C.E.O.'s of the largest American companies earned an average of 42 times as much as the average worker in 1980, but 531 times as much in 2001. Perhaps the most astounding statistic is this: From 1980 to 2005, more than four-fifths of the total increase in American incomes went to the richest 1 percent.

That's the backdrop for one of the first big postelection fights in Washington — how far to extend the Bush tax cuts to the most affluent 2 percent of Americans. Both parties agree on extending tax cuts on the first $250,000 of incomes, even for billionaires. Republicans would also cut taxes above that.

[...]

So we face a choice. Is our economic priority the jobless, or is it zillionaires?

Of course, the answer to that last question is dependent on whom you ask but does anyone really wonder how Republicans would answer?

By planning hundreds of hearings, investigations and creating oversight committees. Aren't the rethugs complaining on how much the government is spending? Yet, it's ok to splurge on these unwarranted "investigations" into things that are only in their imagination. How much of the taxpayers money did Kenneth Starr use to find out that *gasp* president Clinton had a consentual affair with an intern?

Gov. Christie, while serving as U.S. attorney, billed taxpayers for luxury hotels on trips and routinely failed to follow federal travel regulations, according to a report released Monday.

Somehow I don't think I should hold my breath waiting for Joe Scarborough to ask Christie about the hypocrisy of rhetoric against government spending while using expense accounts to stay at a level of luxury he couldn't afford otherwise.

More like this please. MAKE them admit that they don't think other Americans should get the same health care that John Boehner and Eric Cantor and the rest of the anti-government Republicans who are happy to receive a government paycheck receive.

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Jill: If Republicans are the party of fiscal responsibility, why is Texas in such a mess?

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Presidential Commission exonerates BP, Tony Hayward's yacht

The National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling — better known as the NCBDHOSOD? — has published a very official report which proves BP never made a "conscious decision to favor dollars over safety." We already knew this though, because BP thoroughly investigated itself and came to the same exact conclusion! But if you don't believe the NCBDHOSOD or BP, just look at these third quarter profits: a measly $1.79 billion. That's British oil baron pocket change! Seriously, does $1.79 billion really say to stockholders "we favor dollars over safety"? No, it does not. It says "we favor dollars over safety, next quarter we'll make $5 billion." But also it says "Tony Hayward wants his life back." And while we're on the subject (assholes): Tony Hayward isn't even a little bit sorry for playing croquet and eating cucumber sandwiches on his yacht while the Gulf of Mexico filled up with delicious oil. And good gravy, this lame presidential commission probably "agrees" with him, or something. ("We found that Tony Hayward is never sorry, and we aren't sorry either," et cetera.) Basically the sea creatures deserved what they got, the end. [Reuters]

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Nah, no intimidation going on here... A republican poll watcher in suburban Chicago stood for hours in front of the polling place last Tuesday wearing a cap with the logo of the Immigration and Customes Enforcement agency.

I hope the hell they are ready to weather the shitstorm that is coming their way. They are not going up against drooling idiots. They are going up against a polished and well-oiled messaging machine. They need to be huddled with image consultants and messaging massagers. They are going up against professional manipulators who have managed to push the obvious lie ahead of clear truth for twenty years, and they have had no small amount of success doing it.

Don't get me wrong...I am glad to see it. But I hope they have thick skins and are prepared for the gnashing maw of razor sharp teeth that they are about to face down. Over half of the newly elected republicans are climate change deniers, and they are joining a caucus that has already vowed hearings and investigations into the "hoax" of global warming and the "climategate" non-scandal that resulted from hacked emails being selectively released to the public. Deniers insisted that sniping and disagreements among scientists in emails was evidence that the whole thing was a charade. (Five independent panels have since declared otherwise, but that hasn't been a deterent to the deniers.)

The thing about science is that it is not influenced by opinion. Facts are facts, and they have a well known liberal bias, but that doesn't stop people with a well-funded political agenda from pushing a false narrative until the last dog dies.

Like I said, I hope they are ready, because it's different out here than it is in the lab.

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Face it: an Israeli government who tolerate this has less than no interest in peace. Scratch that: it is begging for war. "Israel has revealed plans to build nearly 1,300 housing units for Jewish settlers in occupied East Jerusalem. Building settlements is illegal under international law and recent efforts to revive Israeli-Palestinian peace talks have stalled over the issue. The announcement comes as Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is on an official visit to the US. The US said the move was disappointing, while Palestinian officials said it was an attempt to sabotage the talks. "We thought that Netanyahu was going to the United States to stop settlement activity and restart negotiations, but it is clear to us that he is determined to destroy the talks," chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat was quoted as saying by the AFP news agency."

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Everything is awful in Iraq! Aside from the endless death and destruction, Joe Biden keeps drunk dialing President Jalal Talabani and asking him to resign. [McClatchy]